IMG_0001: from data to information

• The art project “IMG_0001” was recently written up in The New Yorker.
  • Transforms data (matching filenames) into information (time capsules)
• People value information, not data.

Netflix Prize

In 2006, Netflix offered a $1M prize to whoever could write a better algorithm for predicting user ratings for films based on their previous film ratings using 100M ratings like so:

In 2009, Netflix awarded the prize to a team that beat Netflix’s initial algorithm by 10%.

Inside Airbnb

• Does Airbnb contribute to housing scarcity and high rents?
  • Are people renting spare rooms (“sharing economy”) or whole homes?
• “Inside Airbnb” aligns Airbnb data with local housing maps
• Recent report on Dallas finds that:

Returning entire home short-term rentals from lodging to the housing market would make 16% more rental housing units available across Dallas and up to 62% more in some Council Districts.

College Scorecard

• In 2015, the US Department of Education released the College Scorecard
• Aggregates data for students about college
  • University of Richmond’s entry
• Scorecard tacitly assumes that the most important thing about education is return-on-investment

The Opportunity Atlas

Raj Chetty et al. use Census data to study economic mobility based on where children grew up. Richmond is exemplary of a trend they find nationally:

children’s outcomes vary sharply across nearby tracts: for children of parents at the 25th percentile of the income distribution, the standard deviation of mean household income at age 35 is $5,000 across tracts within counties.

See The Opportunity Atlas.

Examples

DSST289 emphases

flowchart LR
    subgraph Get_Data [Get Data]
        direction LR
        A[Import]
        G[Create]
    end
    A --> B[Tidy]
    G --> B[Tidy]
    B --> C[Transform]
    subgraph Understand
        direction LR
        C --> D[Visualize]
        D --> E[Model]
        E --> C
    end
    Understand --> F[Communicate]
    subgraph "The Whole Game"
        direction LR
        Get_Data
        B
        Understand
        F
    end
    style A fill:#E69F00,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style C fill:#E69F00,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style D fill:#E69F00,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style F fill:#E69F00,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2

DSST389 emphases

flowchart LR
    subgraph Get_Data [Get Data]
        direction LR
        A[Import]
        G[Create]
    end
    A --> B[Tidy]
    G --> B[Tidy]
    B --> C[Transform]
    subgraph Understand
        direction LR
        C --> D[Visualize]
        D --> E[Model]
        E --> C
    end
    Understand --> F[Communicate]
    subgraph "The Whole Game"
        direction LR
        Get_Data
        B
        Understand
        F
    end
    style G fill:#56B4E9,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style B fill:#56B4E9,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style E fill:#56B4E9,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2
    style F fill:#56B4E9,stroke:#000,stroke-width:2

“Agents”

Sam Altman, OpenAI (ChatGPT) CEO, recently wrote:

We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies.

Your take

What role, if any, do you think LLMs should have in college?